"I got on so shady today," George Lewis Jr., the Los Angeles musician known as Twin Shadow, said as he slumped into a chair on the Levi's car of the Station to Station train as it chugged from Los Angeles to Oakland on Friday afternoon. "I just walked on the train, jumped in a car and went to sleep. Nobody asked me who I was."

Lewis joined the tour for its final leg, a 13-hour trek from L.A.'s Union Station to the Bay Area. Station to Station, a public art project helmed by artist Doug Aitken in collaboration with Levi's, has been making its way across the country over the course of three weeks, each stop featuring different musicians and artists. Lewis was game to get in on the fun, which reached its boiling point during this segment as the booze flowed freely and everyone celebrated the endpoint with a rowdy dance party to Quad City DJ's "C'mon N' Ride It (The Train)."

Lewis has been touring for the past year in support of his latest album Confess, a collection of '80s-tinged, electro-indie numbers, and is slowly preparing to make his next disc. We joined Lewis on the journey to Oakland to chat about how touring inspires his songwriting and his own relationship with fashion.

Have you ever toured on a train before?

I don't think so. I've taken trains for performances before, but obviously nothing like this. No swagged out old train.

How does being in motion on tour affect your creativity?

That's a good thing to think about. I'm not sure I know the answer to that. It takes away creativity in the moment. Post-motion and stillness is what's inspiring for me. It's the same with how any artist is made: You live life and then when you stop and think about what you've been through it's inspiring. But the road is weird. You learn to accept it as your constant life, and once it's done, you blank out and can really think about what you've been though.

Do the strange places you sometimes end up on tour ever inspire you?

Yeah, for sure. On this last tour we took a lot of time to get off the main road. We went to Carlsbad Caverns National Park [in New Mexico]. We stopped at a bunch of different places and really tried to make our days off count this time around. That was inspiring. I had never been in a cave before properly so that was really cool.

Have you ever written a song about one of these unexpected places?

I should! If I was a responsible songwriter I would. I've slowed down a bit. Quantity is no longer my game.

When you feel the idea for a song coming, do you stop everything to help foster it?

I try. It's hard, nowadays, to stop everything. I really have to force myself to have my phone off and really not be around distractions. In Los Angeles I've found that there's a lot more time to just be focused. But I'll stop what I'm doing if I can or I'll say "Hey hold on a second" and write down whatever it is. My notes section in my phone is full of all kinds of momentary ideas.

How far along are you on your next album?

I don't know. There's tons of stuff written for the record, but it's not there yet. It just has to come. I always wanted to be that kind of person who could conceptualize a record beforehand but it never works out that way. It takes its time and becomes whatever it wants to be without me trying to control it.

Do you think your style is related to your music in any way?

My style changes by the week so I really don't know. My friends always say that every time they see me they don't recognize me anymore. I'm constantly changing. I really couldn't define it. I'm always looking for something new, and I have a lot of friends who are designers. I like wearing their stuff. I am leaving it up to them to style my life. I work with these guys called Public School out of New York. They're doing really well now and I really look toward them for inspiration on my day-to-day look.

Do you wear the same thing onstage as you do in life?

I've started to. I thought about that a lot for a while. It's okay to wear a "costume" onstage, but with life and stage the goal has always been to make them the same thing. To be as extravagant onstage as you are in real life.

Is there anything you won't wear onstage?

I can't wear sneakers. I refuse to wear sneakers onstage. I hope I don't say that and then someone finds a YouTube clip of me in sneakers! I feel weird in sneakers on stage. Just looking casual and boring on stage is a bummer in general. It's like when you see people in their sweatpants at the supermarket and it's like, "Come on, man." Unless they're cool sweatpants. Although I'm sure I've broken all these rules.

We heard you talking earlier about how you customized the Levi's you're wearing. How did you do that?

I got my landlord's big mop bucket, and I filled it with bleach and water. I got a bunch of stones and wrapped the stones in with the jeans and then left them in the bucket for like 20 minutes. And it made this bleached effect on the jeans. I just came up with it. I've been getting bored of just wearing the straight-up blue jeans, so recently I've been trying to spice it up. I designed a bunch of the clothes for our tour. I painted all the shoes for our tour with big, heavy paint on everybody's shoes. I made a jacket that's patches entirely covering it inside and out.

Would you ever design clothes for people besides yourself?

I don't have the bandwidth for it. I don't have the attention span to get involved in the fashion. Maybe Levi's and I can make a bunch of money with these bleached jeans though.